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Mass exodus causes pre-Rita gridlock
By Michael Graczyk, Associated Press Writer
Friday, September 23, 2005 | 1 comment(s)
HOUSTON - Hurricane Rita roared toward the Texas and Louisiana coast with 135 mph winds today, creating monumental traffic jams along evacuation routes and raising fears of a crippling blow to the nation's oil-refining industry. As many as 24 people were killed when a bus carrying elderly evacuees caught fire.
In rainy New Orleans, water poured over a patched levee, gushing into one of the city's lowest-lying neighborhoods - the hard-hit and largely empty Ninth Ward - and heightening fears that Rita would flood the devastated city all over again.
"Our worst fears came true. The levee will breach if we keep on the path we are on right now, which will fill the area that was flooded earlier," said Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard.
The storm was expected to come ashore early Saturday along the upper Texas-Louisiana coast on a course that could spare Houston and Galveston a direct hit. But Rita could plow straight into the Beaumont and Port Arthur area, a stretch of refineries and chemical plants about 75 miles east of Houston.
By this morning, the freeways within Houston had cleared out, but traffic was still bumper-to-bumper from the outskirts of the city toward Austin and Dallas. The state escorted tanker trucks full of gas to empty stations in small towns along the way.
Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, the chief executive for the county surrounding Houston, told residents who had not left yet to stay where they were for the storm.
The bus fire took place in a traffic jam on Interstate 45 near Wilmer, southeast of Dallas. The vehicle was rocked by explosions and engulfed in flames that reduced it to a blackened, burned-out shell.
Early indications were that the bus it caught fire because of mechanical problems, then passengers' oxygen tanks started exploding, Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokesman Don Peritz said.
Nearly 2 million people along the Texas and Louisiana coasts were urged to get out of the way of Rita, setting off an unprecedented exodus that brought traffic to a standstill across the Houston metropolitan area. Cars overheated and ran out of gas in 10- and 12-hour traffic jams. Some drivers gave up and turned around and went home.
"It can't get much worse, 100 yards an hour," fumed Willie Bayer, 70. "It's frustrating bumper-to-bumper."
Scores of petrochemical plants are situated along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast in the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries, and damage and disruptions caused by Rita could cause already-rising oil and gasoline prices to go even higher. Also, environmentalists warned of the possibility of a toxic spill.
Plants shut down operations and hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas Gov. Rick Perry said state officials had been in contact with plants about "taking appropriate procedures to safeguard their facilities."
At 11 a.m. EDT, Rita was about 210 miles southeast of Port Arthur, moving northwest near 10 mph. Its winds had weakened to near 135 mph - down from 175 mph on Thursday. That meant Rita was on the border between a Category 3 and a Category 4 storm.
Its hurricane-force winds extended up to 85 miles from the center, and its tropical storm-force winds reached outward 205 miles, meaning Houston and Galveston might not feel Rita's full fury but could still get battered.
Two communities that stood to bear the brunt of the storm were Beaumont, which is a petrochemical, shipbuilding and port city of about 114,000; and Port Arthur, a city of about 58,000 that is home to industries that include oil, shrimping and crawfishing.
The first bands of rain were expected before nightfall today. Forecasters warned of the possibility of a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet, battering waves and rain of up to 20 inches, with more than 25 inches possible over the next several days as the storm moves inland into Texas and Louisiana and wrings itself out.
Texas officials scrambled to reroute several inbound highways to accommodate outbound traffic, but many people were waiting so long they ran out of gas and were forced to park.
"We know you're out there," Houston Mayor Bill White said of the congestion that extended well into Louisiana. "We understand there's been fuel shortages."
Texas Army National Guard trucks were escorted by police to directly provide motorists with gasoline. The state also was working to get more than 200,000 gallons of gas to stations in the Houston area.
By late Thursday night, the traffic was at least moving slowly, but was still backed up for about 100 miles in what White called "one of the largest mass evacuations in American history."
Rita brought steady rain to New Orleans for the first time since Katrina. The forecast was for 3 to 5 inches in the coming days - dangerously close to the amount engineers said could send floodwaters pouring back into recently dry neighborhoods.
The Army Corps of Engineers added sandbags to shore up New Orleans' levees and installed 60-foot sections of metal across some of the city's canals to protect against storm surges.
About 5,000 soldiers and National Guard members remained in the city, along with about 1,400 police officers, Nagin said.
Oliver Lucius left New Orleans with his family after Katrina and was beginning to build a life in Corpus Christi. He and his wife had found jobs and their children were enrolled in local schools. Then came Rita.
"It was just settling in that I was there for the hurricane, and then I came here," said Ariel Lucius, 13, Oliver's daughter. "Now it seems like a dream."
The usually bustling tourist island of Galveston - rebuilt after as many as 12,000 people died in a 1900 hurricane - was all but abandoned, with at least 90 percent of its 58,000 residents cleared out.
The last major hurricane to strike the Houston area was Category-3 Alicia in 1983. It flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead.
At Houston's Johnson Space Center, NASA evacuated its staff, powered down the computers at Mission Control and turned the international space station over to the Russian space agency.
Katrina's death toll in Louisiana rose to 832 on Thursday, pushing the body count to at least 1,069 across the Gulf Coast. But workers under contract to the state to collect the bodies were taken off the streets of New Orleans because of the approaching storm.
In southwestern Louisiana, up to 500,000 residents along the state's southwest coast were urged to evacuate and state officials planned to send in buses to take refugees.
The U.S. mainland has not been hit by two Category 4 storms in the same year since 1915. Katrina came ashore Aug. 29 as a Category 4.
"Katrina. It's scared everyone," said Dianna Soileau, 29, who was fleeing the refinery town of Texas City with her husband and two children. "We don't want to be the same thing."
---
Associated Press writers Pam Easton in Galveston and Liz Austin in Austin contributed to this report.
---
On the Net:
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
In rainy New Orleans, water poured over a patched levee, gushing into one of the city's lowest-lying neighborhoods - the hard-hit and largely empty Ninth Ward - and heightening fears that Rita would flood the devastated city all over again.
"Our worst fears came true. The levee will breach if we keep on the path we are on right now, which will fill the area that was flooded earlier," said Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard.
The storm was expected to come ashore early Saturday along the upper Texas-Louisiana coast on a course that could spare Houston and Galveston a direct hit. But Rita could plow straight into the Beaumont and Port Arthur area, a stretch of refineries and chemical plants about 75 miles east of Houston.
By this morning, the freeways within Houston had cleared out, but traffic was still bumper-to-bumper from the outskirts of the city toward Austin and Dallas. The state escorted tanker trucks full of gas to empty stations in small towns along the way.
Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, the chief executive for the county surrounding Houston, told residents who had not left yet to stay where they were for the storm.
The bus fire took place in a traffic jam on Interstate 45 near Wilmer, southeast of Dallas. The vehicle was rocked by explosions and engulfed in flames that reduced it to a blackened, burned-out shell.
Early indications were that the bus it caught fire because of mechanical problems, then passengers' oxygen tanks started exploding, Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokesman Don Peritz said.
Nearly 2 million people along the Texas and Louisiana coasts were urged to get out of the way of Rita, setting off an unprecedented exodus that brought traffic to a standstill across the Houston metropolitan area. Cars overheated and ran out of gas in 10- and 12-hour traffic jams. Some drivers gave up and turned around and went home.
"It can't get much worse, 100 yards an hour," fumed Willie Bayer, 70. "It's frustrating bumper-to-bumper."
Scores of petrochemical plants are situated along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast in the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries, and damage and disruptions caused by Rita could cause already-rising oil and gasoline prices to go even higher. Also, environmentalists warned of the possibility of a toxic spill.
Plants shut down operations and hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas Gov. Rick Perry said state officials had been in contact with plants about "taking appropriate procedures to safeguard their facilities."
At 11 a.m. EDT, Rita was about 210 miles southeast of Port Arthur, moving northwest near 10 mph. Its winds had weakened to near 135 mph - down from 175 mph on Thursday. That meant Rita was on the border between a Category 3 and a Category 4 storm.
Its hurricane-force winds extended up to 85 miles from the center, and its tropical storm-force winds reached outward 205 miles, meaning Houston and Galveston might not feel Rita's full fury but could still get battered.
Two communities that stood to bear the brunt of the storm were Beaumont, which is a petrochemical, shipbuilding and port city of about 114,000; and Port Arthur, a city of about 58,000 that is home to industries that include oil, shrimping and crawfishing.
The first bands of rain were expected before nightfall today. Forecasters warned of the possibility of a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet, battering waves and rain of up to 20 inches, with more than 25 inches possible over the next several days as the storm moves inland into Texas and Louisiana and wrings itself out.
Texas officials scrambled to reroute several inbound highways to accommodate outbound traffic, but many people were waiting so long they ran out of gas and were forced to park.
"We know you're out there," Houston Mayor Bill White said of the congestion that extended well into Louisiana. "We understand there's been fuel shortages."
Texas Army National Guard trucks were escorted by police to directly provide motorists with gasoline. The state also was working to get more than 200,000 gallons of gas to stations in the Houston area.
By late Thursday night, the traffic was at least moving slowly, but was still backed up for about 100 miles in what White called "one of the largest mass evacuations in American history."
Rita brought steady rain to New Orleans for the first time since Katrina. The forecast was for 3 to 5 inches in the coming days - dangerously close to the amount engineers said could send floodwaters pouring back into recently dry neighborhoods.
The Army Corps of Engineers added sandbags to shore up New Orleans' levees and installed 60-foot sections of metal across some of the city's canals to protect against storm surges.
About 5,000 soldiers and National Guard members remained in the city, along with about 1,400 police officers, Nagin said.
Oliver Lucius left New Orleans with his family after Katrina and was beginning to build a life in Corpus Christi. He and his wife had found jobs and their children were enrolled in local schools. Then came Rita.
"It was just settling in that I was there for the hurricane, and then I came here," said Ariel Lucius, 13, Oliver's daughter. "Now it seems like a dream."
The usually bustling tourist island of Galveston - rebuilt after as many as 12,000 people died in a 1900 hurricane - was all but abandoned, with at least 90 percent of its 58,000 residents cleared out.
The last major hurricane to strike the Houston area was Category-3 Alicia in 1983. It flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead.
At Houston's Johnson Space Center, NASA evacuated its staff, powered down the computers at Mission Control and turned the international space station over to the Russian space agency.
Katrina's death toll in Louisiana rose to 832 on Thursday, pushing the body count to at least 1,069 across the Gulf Coast. But workers under contract to the state to collect the bodies were taken off the streets of New Orleans because of the approaching storm.
In southwestern Louisiana, up to 500,000 residents along the state's southwest coast were urged to evacuate and state officials planned to send in buses to take refugees.
The U.S. mainland has not been hit by two Category 4 storms in the same year since 1915. Katrina came ashore Aug. 29 as a Category 4.
"Katrina. It's scared everyone," said Dianna Soileau, 29, who was fleeing the refinery town of Texas City with her husband and two children. "We don't want to be the same thing."
---
Associated Press writers Pam Easton in Galveston and Liz Austin in Austin contributed to this report.
---
On the Net:
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
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